history

Records from the 1940 Census were released earlier this month, 72 years after the Census was taken, and you can find full, house-by-house data online via the National Archives, in the form of scanned record sheets filled out by the census takers. Simply fill in your state/county/city/street, et voila! ...you have 50 pages of scanned, 70-year-old, handwritten pages to read through to find your house. (That last step is the time-consuming part.)

Our house was inhabited by one Theodor Schellinger and his family, who apparently relocated from Flint to Ypsilanti sometime between 1935 and 1940, and paid $35/month in rent for our house.

In 1920, my third-great uncle James M. Cox, was the Democratic candidate for President, with FDR as his running mate. I've just found that his campaign's equivalent of Dreams From My Father is available through Project Gutenberg - The Progressive Democracy of James M. Cox, written by his secretary, Charles E. Morris. It includes some rather glowing bits on Cox's actions as Governor of Ohio from 1913-1920 with regards to labor:

From 1995-1999, the IWW had their general headquarters in Ypsilanti. (After 4 years in San Francisco and 85 in Chicago.)

That space is now The Rocket. I wonder if any of Paul's suppliers carry IWW-themed items. (Question: Would "the singingest union America ever had" object to their slogans being pasted on retro kitsch and sold to hipsters?)

I apologize for the silence in this venue. My idle interneting time has been otherwise occupied lately with digesting various sources from the Bentley and elsewhere into Arborwiki pages on (mostly Ypsilanti) past local industries.